For a large-scale financial entity (such as a corporation, business conglomerate, government, or other large organization), effective and accurate monitoring and control of the financial activities of its divisions, departments, and employees may require a substantial investment of resources. Generally, different types of financial transactions of the entity are performed, controlled and monitored by different, independent computerized financial systems. Each independent financial system may operate on a different, possibly incompatible computer platform.
For example, an entity's travel purchasing transactions may be facilitated by a major credit card company such as American Express.RTM. using the American Express computer system. The entity's supply purchasing may be facilitated through a separate, independently-operated computer system, such as a Visa.RTM. credit card program offered by a bank. Cash expenditures may be recorded and processed manually or facilitated through a yet another independent financial system supporting ATM capabilities. The entity's payroll may be facilitated by yet another independent computer system. Payments to contractors and service providers may be facilitated by still another independent system. The larger and more diverse the entity's financial operations, the more independent financial systems may be used to facilitate, control, and monitor its various operations.
The transactions performed by each independent system may be periodically reported to the entity, for example, in the form of a statement printout or computerized listing of all transactions performed within a certain period of time. Thus, in order to monitor and control its comprehensive financial transactions for a given period of time, the entity must consolidate the reports received from each independent system. The consolidation process may require an investment of substantial time and resources by the entity. For example, in order to analyze and utilize financial transaction information gathered by multiple computerized financial systems, an entity may create a large accounting department of employees to manually consolidate and process all of the information from the various internal and external systems. The consolidation process (also known as "backroom" processing) may be performed with the assistance of a computerized system that processes and stores financial information from different internal and external computerized systems, for example, as input by the entity's employees. Thus, large and diverse entities often invest substantial resources in manual or computer assisted consolidation, or both, in order to obtain and consolidate into a usable format the financial data necessary to monitor and manage spending and purchasing.
The entity's reliance on periodic reports generated by multiple independent systems also makes it virtually impossible for the entity to monitor its comprehensive spending, purchasing, and other financial transactions on-line as transactions are processed and posted by each independent system. Periodic reporting functions of the independent systems inevitably create delays in the receipt by the entity of the information reported by the independent systems. Moreover, the process of consolidating the financial records needed to provide a comprehensive financial report for the entity at a given time from multiple independent systems may require a substantial amount of time and effort, effectively precluding the real-time monitoring of spending and purchasing activities within the entity.
In addition, any changes in transaction authorizations, such as spending limits on purchase transactions, must be communicated to the operator of each independent system for implementation, creating delays in the entity's ability to control its financial transactions.
In view of the drawbacks described above, there is a need for a system that enables easy, real-time consolidation, monitoring and control of an entity's financial transactions as performed by various independent computerized systems.